Wonderful World of Wikis

Definition : a wiki is a web page with an edit button.

It's what THEY can do that matters

who are members can edit the web pages just by clicking Edit, typing their changes, and clicking Save.

Examples of student-made wikis

Learning Latin America - built by two sections of 9th graders in the same school. Take a look at the Discussions on the various pages. All the content in the wiki was written by those 9th graders
Links to a couple good ones. 4th and 6th grades built the. Reno Bike Project (6th graders). And here's a video promo for their wiki that was shown on their local TV station. Animal Ark (4th graders)
British Romantic Authors - a wiki built by juniors and seniors
7th Grade Science - all pages built by 7th grade students
APsystemproject - another health related wiki
Check these out - wikis that are still very good examples
Resources For History Teachers - Built by a teacher FOR teachers. But, OUR goal is to have KIDS making these wikis.

Ideas for Using a Wiki

Wikified research papers. Each student gets one page where he/she write the research paper. Instead of footnotes for credits, they create hyperlinks to their resources. All students can see all other student's papers.
Portfolios for each student in each subject for the year. Each student gets a page for each subject where notes can be stored, links to resources, and embedded projects.
A website to host embeddable projects from Glogster, voicethread, etc etc
A place for students to take notes for the year. One page per unit. A scribe of the day is in change of adding notes for the day. Anyone can add links and embed videos, etc. The discussion area can be used to ask questions, discuss key questions, etc.
Create a book Club site. Tag pages with the Genre of the Book to make the Navigation build itself.
A list of 50 ideas for using wikis. Which ideas interest you most? Remember, it's not what YOU can do with a wiki, but what the STUDENTS can do.
Wiki Ideas from Teachers First. Hover over the topic to see the ideas.

Projects

Learn to use Projects (building a wiki with Teams). They are PERFECT for group work. You can limit the ability to edit certain pages to just team members.

Getting Started

Create an account here. Use your school email address so they can verify that you're a teacher.
Upload student accounts in the Manage Wiki section. (login names must be unique. Consider adding your school prefix, ie: TSDJamesG. Remember login names appear with posts in the Discussion areas and in the History section.)

Tips (Their blog of tips and tricks)

Warn students about two or more trying to edit the same page at the same time. Last one to save Wins.
Learn to use tags for pages. They're a GREAT help in the Navigation area.
Learn to use templates if you want a uniform look to your wiki. When a new page is made, the creator has the option to make it from a template page. You can have multiple templates per wiki, if you wish.
Show students the history section. Remind them that everything they do is credited to them. Be positive. They will quickly realize the other side of the coin, as well.